We awake bathed in silent blue static, the mute TV fizzing a mist of electromagnetic spit-spray over the crumpled bladders of Malibu Caribbean Cosmo strewn about her belly and floor. Clawing the mangled remnants of a flaccid cheroot from her suprasternal notch, she levers a slippered foot down from threadbare sofa to bubbling lino, and I wince at the crunchsqueal of empty blister packs on the rug behind my oven-mitt pillow.
Beneath the coffee table graveyard of noodle cartons and soiled wigs, the carmine blink of her JULY SUBSCRIBER GIFT WHILE STOCKS LAST radio alarm clock reckons 21:89, which I blearily guesstimate puts us at something close to 3:45 in the not-even-morning, and I’m all great so I have to be at the chicken auction in like two hours and I can barely even focus on my own retching at this point, perfect.
I swallow dryly through the sickly cobweb of fajita mix and nitrous. Her screen door sags loosely ajar, and buzzy heat oozes in from the breakers yard with the stifling gloop and tang of cooking asphalt.
She hacks up pretty fierce, mumbling something cotton-mouthed about how the Swedish name for TV static means “war of the ants” or whatever, then flicks on a lamp and stumps away across the kitchenette and hoists herself on to the rinsing sink and I scrunch my up eyes super tight and swear to god Nana this is the last goddamn Carcassonne night I ever come over for and guess what I’m probably like 65% serious this time.
